When you're a young kid, you feel like as if the world is your oyster. Everything is for the taking, you just need to have the gumption to go out and take it. Do what you want to do. Go where you want to go. See what you want to see.
And that's exactly how it should be when you're young. Your eyes are still relatively blind to how the real world operates, and you're just making your way through the things that occupy space in your life with a sense of unintentional innocence that's witnessed by the adults who are close to you.
I'll tell ya, I have this same feeling every time the month of June rolls around. Well, I shouldn't say that, exactly. I guess a better way to explain it is that I have a sense of remembrance of this kind of feeling. Whenever graduation season rolls around and I find myself going to cover this or that event in this or that community, I can't help but put myself in all those grads' shoes and remember what it was like to be that age and to be where I was at that stage in my life.
When you're that age, you think you can become anything in the entire world and the next few stages of your life are nothing but a clear, white canvas. What will you paint it with? What colours will tell your story? What direction will you take next? What will ultimately be your story?
When we're young, we want to be anything and everything. I can remember several things I wanted to be while growing up.
Starting from a very young age of 4-5, I wanted to be a professional wrestler. Yep, not a whole lot of surprise coming from close family members who may be reading this and those who know me the best. What can I say? I was obsessed with it. I became addicted to the world of sports-entertainment when I'd only had a few years racked up on this earth. The pomp, the pageantry, the glitz, the glamour, the bright lights, the crowd noise, and the simplistic formula of good guy vs bad guy; the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, before the pandas came along in 2002 and made them switch to WWE, the 'E' standing for 'entertainment') had it all and offered it in spades. That dream lasted for a few years before I gave up on it, although to this day I'm still a very big fan of pro wrestling. When it's done right, this "athletic theatre" can be the greatest live entertainment on Earth.
When I was 10 years old, I went to a football game with my brother-in-law, Shawn. It was October 1995, and the Saskatchewan Roughriders were playing host to the Calgary Stampeders at Taylor Field. We went to the game, and I don't know what it was, but I was just electrified by the sport of football. I loved the physicality of it, and watching the team carry out a successful play en route to scoring a crowd-roaring touchdown was incredibly thrilling. When conversation shifted towards what I wanted to be when I grew up, the only thing I had on my mind was 小蓝视频 a football player. It'd take training and a lot of hard work, Shawn told me, and I took that to heart. When my class at Conquest School started playing football in gym class out on the grass, I loved it. I felt a thrill go up and down my arms when I caught a game-winning pass and nabbed my own TD. What a feeling!
I can't pinpoint when my football fever faded away, but I can remember when my next "I wanna do THIS now!" feeling came into effect. I was in Grade 8 with my pals Kevin and Brock, and through the cinematic genius of Kevin, we opted to carry out video projects for almost every class assignment in Language Arts. I'd been starting to toss around ideas for movie scenarios and I was writing the odd piece here and there, but Kevin's eye for movie-making just snatched my attention and took me places that enabled both of our creative minds to grow. He was a wonderful editor (and still is) and he showed me that he had a great mind for bringing together music and scenery. Even something as simple as footage of the lone Saskatchewan prairie became this eerie, haunting place thanks to his idea to pair it with Leonard Cohen's 'Waiting for a Miracle' over the soundtrack. Man, I remember just having so much fun shooting things with Kevin, whether they were school-related or just feeling like having a cinematic Saturday.
The dream to become a screenwriter only intensified for me when I was emailed during my Grade 11 year from a business called Paradigm. They were an independent production company and they had gotten wind of my horror script called, 'Sinners Repent'. They offered me $1500 for it, but said they wanted to change the ending to a much more positive one that left the door open for potential sequels. This was my first foray into what they call "bonehead stubbornness" because I actually turned them down. Can you believe that?!? Here I am, a 17-year old kid from the prairies who's 小蓝视频 offered cash money for something I'd written, and all they want to do is change the ending.........and I say NO?!?!? I think about that today and all I do is laugh and shake my head. On one hand, I can't help but give myself the tiniest bit of applause, if only because that's some impressive ground-holding, but again, DUDE, it was $1500! Ah, the mistakes we make when we're kids, eh?
Being a filmmaker was the dream for a few years after that, including a stint out in Victoria, BC attending film school from 2005 to 2006. But ultimately, I think film school just brought home the reality when it came to one's chances at finding success in the industry. I wouldn't stop writing movies, and I never have, but I wasn't too keen on starting out in the business by 小蓝视频 a coffee fetcher on some D-grade, no-money production. So I came home, and I've been home ever since.
If we flash forward to today, I can proudly say that I've been a weekly news journalist for, well, it'll be 15 years as of the 27th of this month. I don't regret a thing about my career choice, as it gives me a unique perspective on our world and the opportunity to tell stories about life in this part of the world.
Still, it's interesting to take a walk down Memory Lane. My oh my, just where did the years go?
For this week, that's been the Ruttle Report.
